Conventionally, a vehicle such as a wagon and a minivan is provided with, at a side part of its body, a sliding door that is opened and closed in vehicle-front and vehicle-back directions, thereby allowing passengers or merchandise to be easily loaded or unloaded from a side direction of the vehicle. This sliding door can normally be opened and closed by a manual operation. However, in recent years, there is also often found such a vehicle that the automatic opening/closing apparatus is mounted on the vehicle to automatically open and close the sliding door.
This automatic opening/closing apparatus is known as a cable type in which a cable (cable member) connected to the sliding door from the vehicle-front and vehicle-back directions is guided to a driving unit disposed in the vehicle body via reverse pulleys disposed at both ends of a guide rail; the cable is wound around a driving drum provided to the driving unit; and this drum is driven for rotation by a driving source such as an electric motor so that the sliding door is automatically opened and closed while being drawn by the cable. In this case, a reduction-mechanism equipped motor in which a motor main body and a reduction mechanism are formed as one unit is used as the electric motor, wherein a case is fixed to this electric motor and a tensioner mechanism for applying a predetermined tension to the drum and the cable is accommodated in the case.
Meanwhile, in order to control an operation of the electric motor, the automatic opening/closing apparatus is provided with a control device. For example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-269040) discloses an automatic opening/closing apparatus in which a control device is fixed to a bracket for fixing a driving unit to a vehicle body so as to be shifted in a predetermined direction with respect to the driving unit; and this control device and the driving unit are connected via an external harness.